


here we go again (i kinda wanna be more than friends)

by daisysungs



Series: what are you waiting for? [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hwang Hyunjin & Kim Seungmin are Best Friends, Light Angst, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-it Notes, basically hyunjin writes seungmin notes and while cleaning finds that he’s kept them all, blink and you'll miss him, for like a paragraph, i hope yall enjoy, idk - Freeform, kind of??, lapslock, literally one second of chan im sorry, omf can't believe thats a tag, title from animal by neon trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24903718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysungs/pseuds/daisysungs
Summary: “ask hyunjin. he always has paper and a pen,” he hears jisung say to minho. minho gives him an odd look, and well, hyunjin’s just been doing it forever. ever since he met seungmin, he’s always kept a pack of sticky notes and a pencil on him at all times.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Kim Seungmin, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: what are you waiting for? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823140
Comments: 32
Kudos: 194





	here we go again (i kinda wanna be more than friends)

**Author's Note:**

> can't believe my first oneshot is seungjin when i ult minsung but this fit too well <33

“ask hyunjin. he always has paper and a pen,” he hears jisung say to minho. minho gives him an odd look, and well, hyunjin’s just been doing it forever. ever since he met seungmin, he’s always kept a pack of sticky notes and a pencil on him at all times. 

☆☆☆

“hyunjin, this is seungmin! i’m going to talk to his mom for a while, okay? go play and make friends,” his mom urged. hyunjin narrows his eyes as he puts his backpack down.

“no! i don’t see anyone else here!” he whines but melts when his mom sends him a look. “fine,” he mutters. “if i’m gonna have to make friends, i’m gonna be the best friend that this kid has ever had.” 

out of nowhere, another boy slides out from behind his mother’s legs and cautiously holds his hand out for a handshake. hyunjin wrinkles his nose at the appendage and goes straight in for a hug. 

“you’re seungmin, right? i’m hyunjin! let’s play well,” he trills, and waits for the reply. there’s no response. pausing, he leans forward to see that the boy is engrossed in a book. “what the-” he mutters.

“hey! i’m talking to you!” he tries again, but the other boy simply turns away. “think, hyungenius, think,” he whispers to himself. hyunjin thinks he hears a ghost of a laugh come from the bo- _seungmin,_ his mind corrects, but when he looks back, seungmin’s face is placid. 

after scanning the room, hyunjin’s eyes land on a pack of sticky notes, and a lightbulb goes off in his head. he quickly rips a note from the pack and scribbles ‘seungmeanie, don’t ignore me! i want to be friends -hyunjinnie’ with a black marker. he inspects it and deems his handwriting- well, not good, but legible at the very least. 

with that, he skips over and presses the green note onto seungmin’s open book. the other boy pauses when he sees the note obstructing his reading and hyunjin watches as his eyes scan the note.

“hey. i’m seungmin. seungmin. not seungmean, you brat,” seungmin finally says. 

“did- did you just call me a brat?” hyunjin says, taken aback.

“yeah? you need hearing aids or something?” seungmin challenges.

it’s the start of a beautiful friendship.

☆☆☆

“please?” hyunjin asks sweetly. seungmin still doesn’t look convinced though, so he amps it up a bit. “seungminnie, hyunjinnie wants to come over,” he pouts. hyunjin throws in a pair of puppy eyes for good measure, and his lips curl into a smile when he sees the fight in seungmin’s eyes die out.

“we’re literally seniors in highschool, why are you referring to yourself as ‘hyunjinnie’ in the third person,” seungmin deadpans.

“h-hey! hyunjinnie is cute! and you don’t complain when i call you seungminnie!” hyunjin whines. seungmin’s cheeks go pink at that, but nevertheless rolls his eyes and agrees to the request.

“fine, but don’t complain about being bored later,” seungmin replies, and fuck, if that small smirk decorating the other boy’s face wasn’t enough to make hyunjin’s heart beat a little faster, seungmin reaches over to wrap his fingers gently around his wrist and pulls him a little closer. 

“are you okay?” seungmin asks. “your pulse is really quick, wow.”

hyunjin stutters out a response of “y-yeah,” and the conversation is dropped when jisung sprints into the classroom with seconds left to spare. 

“what took you so long?” seungmin asks, and hyunjin watches as jisung’s cheeks turn a fiery red as he explains that minho wanted to kiss him goodbye and that it “took longer than expected” with a wink and waggles his eyebrows.

“just say you made out next time, idiot!” he laughs, and hyunjin thinks that he could sit through jisung waxing poetic about minho forever if it meant that he could hear seungmin’s laugh on repeat.

☆☆☆

even though they aren’t supposed to pass notes in class, hyunjin pulls off a pastel pink sticky note its stack and carefully writes out ‘seungminnie! hope you do well on the bio test today~ i know you have it next block, but you got this! it’s only fifth grade science and you’re super smart! don’t worry, be happy! fighting!! -hyunjinnie’ and doodles a little puppy face onto it. he’s seen his friend look way too stressed lately, and only wants to see him with a smile on his face, preferably caused by himself (hyunjin will realize later that maybe this isn’t how friends feel).

he gives a cursory glance at the door where the teacher had left to go print out the worksheets and makes a mad dash to seungmin’s seat near the front of the room to drop the note onto his desk. 

hyunjin is rewarded later by the sight of seungmin’s bright smile aimed towards him. in that moment, hyunjin thinks that he’ll never stop writing notes for seungmin if the other boy responds like that.

☆☆☆

goddammit. he should’ve known seungmin had something up his sleeve. hyunjin had just wanted to spend time with his ~~crush~~ best friend, and seungmin had brought him over to ignore him and start organizing his room.

“seungmin,” he whines. no response. seungmin has his back turned to him as he carefully arranges the stuffed animals on his bed. “seungminnie,” he tries again. still no response. finally, the other boy faces him with a challenge in his eyes.

“aww, is our hyunjinnie bored?” he provokes and hyunjin twitches violently and takes the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

“of course not! i was just about to ask you if i could help you out. not that you aren’t cute cleaning,” he pairs a greasy wink with that. “but i figured you could use some help! and we’ll finish faster too! i wanna play animal crossing,” he finishes, last part whispered under his breath. the politely incredulous look that seungmin gives him for that trainwreck of an excuse tells hyunjin that he has exactly zero people fooled. seungmin lets out a small laugh though, and hyunjin feels that it’s okay if takes his loss of dignity to score a win for the gays (and yes, anything seungmin does is a win for the gays. at least to him. oh god, hyunjin thinks. i’m in deep.)

☆☆☆

seungmin has been ignoring him lately.

“have you tried talking to him?” his mom asks while chopping up carrots.

“well, i’ve tried. he keeps running away from me when i approach him,” hyunjin whispers but his voice shakes, and oh god, he’s already in seventh grade and his eyes are tearing up because his best friend isn’t talking to him.

his mom finally turns her head away from the cutting board when she hears her son’s voice tremble. “oh, hyunjinnie,” she says and gathers him into a hug. “you guys have that whole sticky note thing, right? just give him a note or something,” and wow, hyunjin’s feeling real dumb right now. 

he brightens up almost immediately. “thanks, mom! i’m gonna go write it right now!” he grins and runs off, feet thudding against the carpet on the stairs as he rushes to his room. deciding that important situations call for formality, hyunjin goes for the classic yellow stickie and ruffles through his drawers for his special pens. he writes ‘seungmin! you’ve been avoiding me :( and i want you to know that nothing is gonna change between us! if you need hugs, you’ve got it! if you need laughs, you’ve got it! if you need space, you’ve got it! but come back to me soon, okay? love you! -hyunjinnie’. he hesitates when writing ‘love you,’ but keeps it in.

(later, seungmin will come crying to him and tell him that he likes boys. hyunjin feels his heart beat a little faster as he comforts his childhood friend and tell him, yes, liking boys is okay, and even offers to tell him a secret.

“what’s your secret?” seungmin hiccups while drying his remaining tears. 

“well,” hyunjin muses as he carefully dabs at seungmin’s eyes. “i like boys too!”)

☆☆☆

“and they say chivalry is dead,” the younger boy jokes, and hyunjin feels a real smile bloom across his face as he jumps up from where he had planted his ass onto the plush carpet. he bends over into a ninety degree angle and sweeps his arm in a wide arc till it rests against his chest. 

“sir,” he says solemnly, before cracking up. to his credit, hyunjin only falters a bit at the fond smile seungmin carelessly throws him (please, he needs some sort of warning to prepare himself) before joining him at the other boy’s bookshelf. 

“i know you wanted me to help you anyways,” he teases. “must be rough being so sho- ow!” he yelps as seungmin playfully curls his fingers into a fist to punch him lightly. hyunjin dramatically collapses while holding onto his shoulder and lets out groans of pain.

“shut up, you big baby. i’m like two inches shorter than you,” he says while rolling his eyes. “and it didn’t even hurt.” hyunjin narrows his eyes, carefully adopts a wobble to his lower lip and tilts his head down so he can make big, shiny eyes at seungmin to trigger his guilty conscience. 

☆☆☆

they’re freshmen when hyunjin realizes that he has a crush on seungmin. it’s not something big that causes him to become aware of it. it was just the fleeting thought of ‘damn, seungmin looks cute today’ and a responding thought of ‘he always looks cute’ that causes him to really search through his heart for his feelings, and yep. hyunjin starts mentally cataloging every time seungmin had done something in the past and it had made his heart beat faster, or caused his cheeks to heat up, but stops when he realizes that he’s always felt this way. there wasn’t a beginning to his crush for seungmin. 

with this new thought in mind, hyunjin flips through his backpack for his collection of sticky notes and finds a pack in the shape of a cloud. head in love, head in the clouds, it’s all the same, right? he thinks and. oh.

they’re freshmen when hyunjin realizes that he might be in love with seungmin.

the note reads: ‘hey seungminnie!!! this cloud sticky note is because your head is always in the clouds. talk to me moree (´ﾟзﾟ) btw i like your purple sweater! it looks really good on you! love, best friend (forever? i hope) hyunjinnie’

(hyunjin doesn’t stop to think about why seungmin’s head is always in the clouds, and if seungmin wore his sweater a lot more that year, he didn’t think about the reason for that either.)

(he just thanked the gods for it and admired the way it hung on seungmin’s frame)

☆☆☆

“yah. hwang hyunjin,” seungmin says, startling hyunjin out of his acting. “i’m going to the bathroom. if i see you touching anything you aren’t supposed to be touching, you’re-” seungmin ends his sentence by aggresively dragging his thumb across his neck. hyunjin’s eyes follow the movement and rest on the other boy’s neck. (and even seungmin’s neck was beautiful enough to distract him, god, hyunjin really liked kim seungmin too much). 

seeing that he was still waiting for an answer, hyunjin salutes him with a “yes sir!” seungmin sighs, but leaves the room without another word.

smiling, hyunjin uncrosses his fingers from where they had been behind his back. “not a lie if your fingers are crossed,” he whispers under his breath. sorry seungminnie, but the fact that you told me to not snoop makes me even more nosy, he finishes in his head. with the other boy gone, his eyes immediately fall on seungmin’s dresser.

in all his eighteen years of being seungmin’s friend (yes, hyunjin was aware that he didn’t meet seungmin until he was around seven or so, but he felt like they would’ve been friends if they had met) hyunjin had never seen the inside of the dresser. he was about eighty percent sure that there wasn’t anything interesting in the dresser, but he figured that the worst that could come from it was that there really only was clothes.

well. seeing as he was already making up excuses in his head, his mind was clearly made up. hyunjin hurriedly approaches the dresser. holding his breath, he pulls it open to reveal- a scrapbook? blinking and pursing his lips in confusion, he rubs his eyes and confirms that yes, the dresser was empty- save for a purple scrapbook.

with a guilty glance towards the bedroom door, hyunjin crouches down to carefully pick up the notebook. he takes a deep breath, apologizes to seungmin in his head, flips open the cover, and. oh. hyunjin feels his heart thud in his ears as he flips through the scrapbook of sticky notes that seungmin had carefully kept preserved in time and tape.

yes, hyunjin was a little bit annoyed that seungmin had never told him that he made them a scrapbook, but the feeling gets overpowered by a surge of straight affection that multiplies every time he flips a page.

he skims over the sticky notes, watching as his handwriting gets better through the years. god, hyunjin muses to himself. reading over every little note he had written for seungmin was like watching himself fall in love as the notes gradually transitioned from random little notes to something a little sweeter, a little more carefully written as their relationship strengthened. 

he takes a deep breath when his eyes land on the more recent post it notes. there’s extra words written around them- not his more rounded handwriting, but hyunjin would be able to recognize seungmin’s looping script anywhere. he feels his heart give two loud thumps as he realizes what he’s seeing.

every time hyunjin had signed a note ‘love, hyunjinnie,’ seungmin had written a small ‘i’ before it. he blinks once, twice as he starts seeing ‘i love hyunjinnie’ spread throughout the scrapbook. his lips curl up into a smile and hyunjin lets out a quiet squeal while hugging the book to his chest and carefully looks for more little messages. 

so engrossed in his search, hyunjin didn’t hear the toilet flush, signaling seungmin was done. he also didn’t hear seungmin enter the room. he does, however, hear when seungmin makes an unholy shriek as he notices hyunjin flipping through the scrapbook. when he hears the scream and sees a hand coming for the book in his hands, hyunjin screams back. (when his friends ask him why later, he only has one word as a response. instinct.)

seungmin gives him the nastiest look hyunjin has ever seen him direct towards him, and holds his hand out for the scrapbook, but hyunjin holds on to it. he watches as seungmin deflates and sits onto the bed, and after deeming it safe, hyunjin joins him.

“liste-”

“hey so-”

they both start. seungmin sighs and motions for hyunjin to speak first. with a hesitant smile, hyunjin starts up again. “listen, i just wanted to know why you kept all of the notes and didn’t tell me.” and write that you love me too, he finishes in his head. he chances a look at seungmin and sees him hesitate before responding.

“hyunjin, the reason why i never told you that i kept all of your notes was because its pathetic. isn’t it?” seungmin leans back against the headboard of his bed. “it’s so dumb. when you wrote the first note, you instantly became one of the most important people in my life, and not like my other friends or family. you wanted to be friends so bad,” seungmin laughs. “and- and after that, you just kept hanging around me, kept giving me those little notes when i was sad, or needed encouragement, and,” he swallows before continuing and fists his hands in his sheets. “i just- i’ve liked you for forever, i think. at this point it’s probably love. god, this is so stupid.” seungmin’s sniffling a little bit now, but all hyunjin can do is blink. he opens his mouth to speak before seungmin barrels on. “this is why i was never gonna confess, why i was okay just writing it onto the notes. like, i knew you were into guys, at least, but you’re too good, too genuinely kind, and y’know, when you look like that, why would you settle for me?” he lets out another laugh, but this time hyunjin interrupts him. 

“hey. seungmin. don’t say that. you’re the only one for me. you know that right?” he says, eyes staring directly at seungmin’s watery ones. 

“i- you- what?” he responds. hyunjin carefully drops the scrapbook onto a further area of the bed so he can scoot forward and starts wiping at seungmin’s teary eyes.

“seungminnie, i’m in love with you. have been since like, seventh grade,” he freely admits. seungmin still looks confused, though and at this hyunjin lets out a giggle and leans forward.

placing his hands on seungmin’s cheeks, hyunjin says, “i, hwang hyunjin, am in love with one kim seungmin, and now that i know he loves me too, i would very much like it if he would be my boyfriend.” 

☆☆☆

a pause. then. “wait, that’s it? you asked him to date you, then nothing? no agreement, no anything?” minho asks. 

“we made out after,” hyunjin deadpans. “didn’t really expect you’d want to hear about that, but now that i think about it, it makes sense.”

minho snorts. “that’s how the two of you got together? jeez, talk about dramatic,” he says as he combs his fingers through jisung’s hair.

“hyung, you literally have no room to talk. you literally met jisung by teaming up with him to beat someone’s score at the arcade,” hyunjin snarks back.

“how who got together?” chan asks as he walks towards the group.

and although seungmin’s smiling fondly at his group of friends, he can’t help but roll his eyes when he sees his boyfriend open up his mouth to explain. he lets out a laugh. “here we go again.”

end.

**Author's Note:**

> wow the ending is so rushed im sorry pls its my first real fic (kudos to you if ya caught the ending ref to the title)  
> lmk if u want a minsung origin story!!  
> edit: minsung origin story is in the works but it'll be a while sorry
> 
> twt ^^ [@sparklysungs](https://www.twitter.com/sparklysungs)


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